


Rovering to Success

by Lilliburlero



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Aging, Diary, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Original Character Death(s), Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Canon, Redemption, Stealth Crossover, transcript
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-07 21:10:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6824314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I should think I did," said Bunny genially. "I was prepared every minute, but it turned out a terrible flop."</p><p>Actually, Bunny's life has been in its way a success, and one he wants to share.</p><p>*</p><p>Content note: discussion of homophobia, inexplicit mention of death caused by serious burns injury.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Streweminster C. for L-W, MS Box. 85/6, Item 235-98

**Author's Note:**

  * For [disenchanted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disenchanted/gifts).



> Chapter titles mostly derived from Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting manual [_Rovering to Success_](https://archive.org/details/roveringtosucces00badeuoft), and particularly from the five 'Rocks you are likely to bump on'. Thanks to AJHall for the [inspiration.](http://lilliburlero.dreamwidth.org/130717.html?thread=597405#cmt597405)

34 Boat Lane Gardens  
Northenden  
Manchester  
M22 4EX  
23rd May 1998 

 

Miss Amelia Jansen  
Centre for Life-Writing  
Department of History and Social Sciences  
University of Streweminster  
Streweminster  
Dorset  
DT11 9RH

Dear Miss Jansen, 

I am writing in response to your recent advertisement in _Gay Times_. I believe I may be able to be of assistance to you in your PhD research concerning homosexuality in the British armed forces during the period 1939-45. I served, though in a non-combatant capacity, throughout that period, and as to the other criterion: well, let us say that if I never quite reached Carnegie Hall, it was not for want of obedience to the celebrated exhortation.

I would be more than happy to be interviewed, and have letters, diaries and other documents from the time in question, which I think may be of considerable value to your investigations. The world has hitherto demonstrated what I cannot help feeling is an unreasonable lack of interest in my autobiography―why, after all, would a man write a journal that he does not wish to be read? However, sustained largely, I admit, by vanity, I never gave up, and now my perseverance, I hope, may be rewarded. Unfortunately, I no longer get around as much or easily as I used: the innocuous address you see above conceals the gruesome reality of what I believe is prettily called ‘sheltered accommodation.’ Perhaps the best thing would be for me to tell you something about myself, and then you may decide how you wish to proceed.

I was born in Stretford in 1917. After the first War, my father worked on the assembly line at the Ford factory in Trafford Park, a job he did until his death. Before her marriage, my mother was a domestic servant. They had social aspirations for their children (I had one sister, six years older) and encouraged me to obtain an education, making considerable sacrifices so that I might attend grammar school, where I was a happy, if not very studious pupil. I was also, believe it or not, an enthusiastic Boy Scout. That was, until the year of my School Certificate [further pages of letter missing]


	2. Life-Sport

Amelia tried to resist the impulse to gawk. It wasn’t easy: the small flat could scarcely have presented more of a contrast to the institutional-beige walls and grimy sky-blue carpet of the corridor outside. It was like a gallery in a museum of social history, containing objects representative of stylish good taste available to someone with a decent disposable income in each of the last seven decades: Clarice Cliff pottery, a black-lacquered Frankl writing desk and chair, geometric-patterned grey and white Edward Fields rug, two Le Corbusier Gran Confort armchairs, a Lloyd Loom coffee-table and magazine-rack. A mirrored cocktail cabinet, set in a recess, looked cheaper and flashier than the rest of the furniture, but above it hung a painting she thought she might obviously admire without gaucherie: the palette of dull green, cream and gold, the abstract forms handled with a playfulness that made them seem almost anthropomorphic, looked familiar. She looked for the monogram, a linked IT like a Shinto torii, and found it with a little squeal.

‘Is everything all right, Miss Jansen?’ 

‘Yes, sorry. Are you sure I can’t help to carry―’ 

‘No,’ he said, coming through from the kitchenette, ‘as you see, I’ve given in to a trolley.’ It was a very smart one, chrome, glass and lacquer. He too was smart: pink open-necked shirt and deconstructed slate-grey linen suit, against which crimson carpet-slippers struck an eccentric, but not entirely incongruous note. His face was one of those on which preservation wreaks worse havoc than collapse: the hard, searching eyes, high cheekbones and small nose, the fine-drawn bow of his lips, which had clearly once constituted a whole almost ludicrously handsome, had become in old age little short of hideous. 

‘I couldn’t help noticing you have an Imelda Todd. It’s one of the Kore sequence, isn’t it?’ 

‘Oh, you are observant. And well-informed. I don’t think many people your age would know her work―such a shame. She’s still underrated, and undervalued: of course, so many of the best British artists of our century have been women, which is why people persist in thinking we have no modern art. Do sit down. Perhaps you’ll be mother and pour out?’ 

The tea-set too was Clarice Cliff, red and black: she felt for a moment an absurd reticence before grasping the sharply-angled handle of the pot. She saw the strainer just in time, and left-handedly employed it. Leaf tea was nicer, she thought, she must buy some. 

‘Now,’ he said, ‘here’s a sentence I don’t often have a chance to say, but _I’ve never done this before_.’ She heard, for the first time, trace elements of his native vowels. ‘How does it all go?’ 

She explained, ending up saying a little more than she had meant about the difficulties of the project: the tentative approaches and abrupt withdrawals; the memories clouded by incipient dementia; the terror of hostages to fortune which had destroyed so many documents; the unsolicited communiqués from retired colonels―yes, really!―expressing outraged patriotism; the adverse press, which on one occasion had gone national, a grubby inch on a _Sun_ opinion page; her reluctance, finally, to apply definitions to people who had rubbed along contentedly enough without them for sixty or seventy years. 

He listened, gravely. ‘I can’t wonder that people aren’t exactly queuing up. Most of the men I―look, I’ll come to that. I’m a disgusting old exhibitionist, Miss Jansen, I’ll warn you now.’ 

‘Amelia.’ 

‘My friends call me Bunny. But I’ve a purer motive too. My―I nearly said _friend_ out of habit, but that has a good old English meaning that I don’t quite want here―my _partner_ , as people say nowadays, to me it means business only,’ he grinned downwardly and raised an eyebrow, to alarmingly grotesque effect, ‘but these things change, don’t they? My partner―’ he indicated a framed photograph on the desk; Amelia took in a vague impression of self-effacing smile and clerical collar, ‘died last year.’ 

‘I’m so sorry.’ 

‘Thank you. Of course, we couldn't have a life together in the sense that most people mean it―Len loved the Church, or he loved his work in it, and I wasn’t about to force him out of that. He was the sort of person you didn’t want to disappoint, but if you did, he’d tell you why, and what he’d rather you did instead, not leave you to guess how his arcane code of honour worked until you started doing lousy things out of sheer exasperation. The kids in the parish loved him―some tough little customers, but he always got through to them, with gentleness, and a genuine interest in what they were going through, the sort you can’t sham. He made people’s lives better, most of all mine, and because of that they were better people, most of all me. It shouldn’t have stayed a secret, what he was. It shouldn’t have had to. We were always there, Miss―Amelia, and I mean to show people that we were, and what we did for them when they weren’t prepared to grant us damn all. I think you do too.’ 

He picked up his cup, his the little finger, she sensed, somewhat defiantly flared outward. She felt her eyelashes slightly damp and blinked hard. 

‘Yes, absolutely―Bunny.’ She reached into her bag for her Dictaphone. ‘Shall we get started?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amelia's PhD is based on the research done by [Emma Vickers](http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719082948/) about queer servicemen and women in the British armed forces during the Second World War.


	3. Horses

WARREN: ...yes, 1933. Well, the law was quite different, naturally. All sorts of things they let you do now that they didn’t then [laughter]. Off-track betting was illegal, and so our little scheme was pretty risky, not so much because of the law, but because it brought us into contact―well, competition, in a minor way―with some pretty advanced psychopaths. When I think what might have happened to us if we hadn’t been caught, just getting the boot from school seems like pretty good luck: if the real gangsters, even the small-timers, had got their hands on us I mightn’t have kept my looks. I didn’t quite see it that way at the time, though, and neither did my dad. I explained I only got into it because I was interested in the maths of the thing―[interviewer laughter] absolutely true, my dear, though I must admit it paid a bit better than a paper round―and that didn’t go down awfully well, either. Mammy, well, she was the strong silent type, she just said I was a bit of a half-eejit, which signified fairly concentrated imbecility. It was about that time that the penny began to drop about some other things, too. The atmosphere at home, particularly after my sister left to get married, you could slice and dice it with one of those gadgets they're always advertising on the daytime telly... it was no good, and I was always on the lookout for an escape...


	4. Wine

13th September 1935

Worried Brown Eyes showed a hand, or do I mean a leg, at last. Came in & had his usual grill & half bt of claret & was quite gratuitous over the gratuity. Met him after my shift. He has a nice modern flat in a service block, his name’s Philip. Very hairy, all over his back (ugh!) but I do like the gap between his front teeth, isn’t that supposed to mean something, highly-sexed, he wasn’t anyway, nothing out of the ordinary run. He gave it me up the arse, all right as far as it went or as far as that ever goes. Biggish but not much technique. I got a bit loose & bored, lost my stand completely. Then he sucked my cock quite nicely, though. Afterwards we got talking over a cuppa & he showed me some of his kit, altogether too impressed when I told him what was wrong w/ the transceiver & he said you’re wasted working in a chophouse, well that’s true, anyway. Gave me the address of a pal of his who’s in Metrovick. Worth a shot?


	5. [Women]

WARREN: ...well, there were lots of pubs down the docks, if that was your thing. But you could just as easily go in on the wrong night and end up cornered by a mutton-chops who got his start in sail, the wool clipper, the Javanese pirates, the torpedo the day before the Armistice, my dear, the tedium. There was a place… awfully tacky, chrome and leatherette superimposed on what I think had been a Freemason’s Hall about fifty years before. We used to call it the Pouffe and Dildo, but I can’t remember what it was really called, maybe it’ll come back to me. There was Max’s―what was Max’s exactly? Something between a nightclub and the backend of a perfectly dreadful party. No one admitted to liking it, one said, 'oh no, not Max’s, so naff, let's not,' and everyone used to go. So, anyway, there I was, a Bridstow debutante, and…


	6. Cuckoos

27/11/40...There’ll be trouble now, oh, there’ll be no end of trouble now. WHAT LARKS PIP. Attractive boy; I wonder why Miss O. ever bothered with Himself. Old school tie will explain most things for that sort, I suppose & it’s not as if I know what the hell I’m doing either I think we're all cracking up what with that bloody mess at Filton in September & now these latest raids but it’s queer I’d expected a complete ingenue. & not at all: he knew all right, just had his doubts about an affair w/ a neck as stiff as his knee but no evidence of anything comparably rigid in between wh/ you can hardly blame godsakes. Shdnt have told him what I did about Himself’s proclivities but what the hell it was all true after all and if he couldn’t take it he’s no business and better off out. He'd done a bit of training, pacifist or no, nice technique, in its way. Pleasure to receive your left hook old boy. But who fucking cares anyway these days wars are all won on board-school asphalt & not the playing-fields not that any of them went to Eton they fucking wish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Information about the air raid at Filton in September 1940 [here](http://www.aviationarchive.org.uk/stories/pages.php?enum=GE126), and about the bombing of Bristol in November 1940 [here](http://bristolblitzed.org/?page_id=63).


	7. Irreligion

WARREN: That was the Christmas I cursed God, and found redemption. Golly, doesn’t that sound pi, sweetie? Wipe it, will you? Oh, I say, it’s a new one. Minidisc, is it? Are they all they’re cracked up to... show me later. But you simply can’t imagine if you weren't... It was hell, actual hell. A sort of darkness you could see, touch almost... The heat, the smoke and dust, the debris, the noise... and the strange silences, like all the air had been sucked... Look, you can get all this from people who can describe it properly. I got up there in time for the second of the big raids... hang on sorry… no, it’s all right, pardon me. I said, didn’t I, that my sister Veronica was killed? I... what I perhaps should have said is she died… she didn’t die… she died on the morning of the 4th of January… do you see now? Could you turn that thing thank you, thank thank…

[recording resumes]

...yes, quite... no, thank you. What I didn’t know then, of course, was that this nervous boy with the gorgeous dark curls and the precocious fancy for Russian novels was going to be quite the most important person in my life for the next fifty years...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Luftwaffe bombed Manchester heavily on the nights of the 22nd and 23rd of December 1940. More information [here](http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-manchester-blitz).


End file.
